Railways and Demos, Ipswich, London and Cambridge - 23rd February 2013

The no-man's-land inbetween railway tracks and the rest of the normal world is something of a perennial favourite: big old-school engineering mixed with rust, gentle decay and seedy dereliction. In some ways, this strange limbo zone provides something of a window into the soul of a country. Thus, the twice-a-week commute in and out of London provides an occasional diversion where the passing of time is marked, over the weeks, by the coming and going of graffiti or the occasional violent destruction of a trackside building (currently the old Marconi building in Chelmsford and several derelict warehouses on the outskirts of Ipswich are under the cosh of the destructor). It's also where a simmering under-the-radar war is waged between graffiti taggers and The Man, especially along the tracks between Bethnal Green and Liverpool Street Station, where the brick walls were all sprayed a uniform dark brown just before the outbreak of the Olympics, and where new spots of silver-sprayed graffiti are re-appearing like the tentative first flowers of spring. Later, in Cambridge - after dropping off Isobel, Fred and Harry at a birthday party in Linton - Nosher strikes lucky with another of those photographers' pots of gold - a demonstration. This time, it's like being at polytechnic again as a broad coalition of students, trades unions and socialist workers are parading in an anti-fascist march along Mill Road. As well as colourful flags, there are even free samosas.